Fade
by Agent Otter
Summary: "It's safer that way, to remain constantly on the move. But this isn't the first time that they've sacrificed safety for something else." Sydney/Vaughn
1. Default Chapter

Title: **Fade**  
Author: agent otter  
Summary: "It's safer that way, to remain constantly on the move. But this isn't the first time that they've sacrificed safety for something else." Sydney/Vaughn  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: I don't own _Alias_ or anything having to do with it, but if I did I'd be seeing a lot more of Bradley Cooper. And I mean that in several literal ways.  
Author's note: For some reason I seem to be writing a series of stories in which main characters are on road trips and I'm writing in present tense. Uh... sorry.

A rush of stale air hits him in the face as he yanks open the laundromat door and steps inside. The chairs along the wall are worn orange plastic, and the interior smells like fabric softener and resignation.

There's only three people in the place this afternoon, and he sizes them up quickly, automatically, with the wary eye of a man who has grown used to expecting attack from unexpected quarters. He didn't used to do that, but a lot of things have changed, and that's one of the smaller ones. He sees the elderly Asian woman dozing in one of the chairs, the twenty-something man loading up a dryer. He doesn't rule them out as a threat, but they aren't why he's come.

Sydney didn't turn to see him enter, but the angle of the open dryer door to her right provides her with a rear-view that's clear enough to watch his movements. He crosses the distance between them with a handful of halting steps, his knees a little weaker than he'd like them to be. She doesn't turn around, just bends to pull her wet clothes from the basket at her feet and throw them into one of the dryers, a handful at a time.

She leans over to pick up more laundry, and his hand reaches out, wraps gently around her arm, just above the elbow, redirects her motion away from the basket. There's a sudden flood of memories and when she turns, into his arms, he wants to kiss her like he did then. But they have no time -- there was never time or patience or safety enough to make things work -- and instead he wraps one arm around her shoulders, shoves his other hand into his jacket pocket and fingers the pistol there, warmed by his body heat.

She doesn't ask any questions as he ushers her out the back door, checks for tails or threats or big men with machine guns, and finally hurries her down the alleyway, hugging the wall, out to the street where there's a beat-up Chevy sedan idling. She climbs into the passenger seat and he slips behind the wheel, and they move off down the road at a perfectly reasonable pace, no matter how much he wants to push the accelerator all the way to the floor.

He has more patience now, there's more deliberation in his action, and he's a little harder around the edges. He's grown a thin, precise beard that makes him look older. She can see all of this, and tells him with a look that she can't really find it in herself to approve.

"How's your partner?" she finally says, after a half an hour of silence and watching the highway roll by under the afternoon sun. "What's his name? Goldberg?"

"Goldman," he corrects. He fishes one-handed behind her seat, eventually emerging triumphant with a pair of sunglasses in his hand. "He died a couple of months ago." He chuckles a little, inappropriately, then gives her what might pass for an apologetic glance, if the smooth black lenses over his eyes had betrayed anything. "He was shot seven times in a raid on a K-Directorate facility," Vaughn explains, "and when he miraculously survived it they told him 'Sorry, while we were digging around in there we found the mother of all tumors. You'll be dead within a week.' He hung on for two."

Sydney looks down at the worn carpet between her feet. It's dark gray and reveals nothing. "I'm sorry," she says, and she feels bad that she pretended to hardly remember the man. She remembers him. She remembers checking in with every source she had to make sure he wasn't a mole. To make sure he'd take care of Vaughn when she couldn't. Wouldn't, she reminds herself. When she _wouldn't._

Vaughn shrugs, a minute one-shouldered motion, and glances out the window as he changes lanes. That coldness, too, is new, and she wonders if there was more to Goldman than she knew. Had he and Vaughn fought constantly? _Had_ he been a mole? Or had Vaughn just slipped far enough from the man he'd been that he could shrug off his partner's death and not even summon a frown?

"They've got me behind a desk again, for the time being," he says after a moment, conversationally. "Working with Jack on some counter-espionage ops." Another pause as he flounders, wondering why he brought it up, deciding to press forward anyway. "He misses you."

She doesn't nod or smile, just turns her head to look out the window and there's a curtain of long brown hair between them. He falls silent. When they stop at a gas station, she goes into the bathroom and emerges with a shorter haircut, just brushing her shoulders, and she's wearing entirely new clothes: drawstring cargo pants, a long-sleeve shirt with a t-shirt over the top, well-worn sneakers. It almost makes her feel like a college student again. He's already outside, pumping gas, not into the sedan, but into an equally beat-up van. He's changed, too, into a pair of loose jeans and sneakers of his own, and a plain white t-shirt. He turns around and she's almost grateful to see that the severe beard has been shaved off entirely. It takes ten years off his face.

He smiles at her as she climbs into the van, and she thinks that they must look for all the world like two young people in love. They're both adept, now, at playing the parts for which they are cast, then throwing the roles aside when they're done. She feels bad about it, sometimes, but she isn't sure whether she ever knew another way to live.

She doesn't ask where they're going; she doesn't want to know. She doesn't ask what they're running from, either, but that's only because she already knows. Instead she shifts in her seat, leans back against the door, and watches him as he drives.

He seems thinner than she remembers, but stronger too. Wiry. His hands look rougher, thicker around the knuckles and a little calloused, and she guesses that he's been spending a lot of time at the gym, in the boxing ring. She wonders if he still takes Donovan for a run every morning. The wrinkles on his forehead are a little deeper, the crow's feet around his eyes a little more pronounced.

"You look tired," she finally proclaims.

"I am," he replies, but that's all he says.

She lets the silence unravel for awhile, then says, in a voice almost too soft to hear, "How's my dad?"

Vaughn shrugs again, but this time she can tell that he _does_ care. She thinks maybe he's just trying not to rub in the fact that he cares more than she does.

"He's not as mobile as he used to be," Vaughn says. "But he gets by okay. No complaints."

She tries to picture the two of them together, her battle-scarred father -- with a cane, now, to help him walk with a shattered knee -- and this new, harder version of her once-lover. She decides that it makes a perfectly natural image, to imagine the two of them in a quiet corner of the Ops Center, analyzing intelligence data and being silent together. She thinks that he probably appreciates the quiet now, so she doesn't speak either, and dozes in the passenger seat instead.

Vaughn navigates the van through a bumpy maze of highways, rural routes, and dirt roads in circuitous routes before he finally parks the vehicle in the dubious shelter of a crumbling barn. He touches her shoulder lightly, and she follows him as he squeezes between the front seats and into the back of the vehicle.

There's a mattress laid out on the floor, so that one of them can sleep while the other drives. It's safer that way, to remain constantly on the move. But this isn't the first time that they've sacrificed safety for something else.

He reaches for her tentatively, as if he isn't sure of himself or her anymore. But she meets his hand halfway, catching it with hers, slipping in closer in the cramped confines of the van and placing his palm against her hip. They shed their disguises slowly, as if there's pain in their joints from the process of laying themselves bare, but when they stumble over each other and land in a tangle on the mattress, they both manage to laugh. They make love almost as tenderly as she remembers it, but his hands are less certain now, endearingly clumsy, and she has to concentrate to keep from choking on the love and desperation and hopelessness and fear that grip her throat.

When fatigue and emotion finally send them into exhausted sleep, she slips her hand into his and curls up on her side, her face pressed against his shoulder, as she drifts away.

* * *

The van is moving again when she wakes, and though she immediately recognizes her surroundings, knows that she's safe, she still curses herself for carelessness. She should've woken when he moved, much less when he started the vehicle and pulled back out onto those poorly maintained roads. But a glance up between the front seats reveals that they're back on the highway. She snatches up her clothes, slips into them, then wriggles her way back between the seats and collapses on the passenger side.

He looks over and smiles a tiny little smile, but doesn't seem to mind that she's just sitting there again, watching him.

"Why didn't we work?" she asks suddenly.

The swerve is slight, and she wouldn't have noticed it if she weren't trained for that kind of thing, and if it hadn't been accompanied by the tightening of his jaw.

"Because you decided to play the martyr and go into hiding," he answers. His lips hardly move and the words grate out from between his teeth.

"We were falling apart long before that," she argues, shaking her head.

"No."

"Yes."

"We would've been fine. But you gave up on us." He shoots her a glare that's accusing and angry. She shrinks back a little against the door.

"We weren't fine. My father was on a suicidal bender and--"

"Francie wasn't your fault."

The silence in the car would be absolute, if the van were better insulated against road noise. All they can hear is the steady hiss of tires on the roadway.

"Things get hard sometimes, Sydney," he finally says, and his voice is a cracking murmur. "You know that better than anyone. But you can't just run away when you're about to break. It doesn't help to put you back together." He looks at her, long and hard. "That's supposed to be _my_ job. You're supposed to let me be there for you."

"Watch the road," she chides, and then she snaps her mouth shut, because she's sure if she makes another noise it'll be a sob, and she can't afford to collapse. Not now.

But he seems to know how close she is to that edge, and he glances at her again. "You can't be so fucking strong all the time," he says. "It's not fair to us mere mortals."

* * *

They squabble constantly when they're together, but he doesn't seem to want the road trip to end; each day he begs her for one more day and each day she gives in because it's been over a year since she's seen him and she didn't remember any of it feeling so good. When she realizes that he's steadily winding his way west -- back toward California -- she asks him to stop in a K-Mart parking lot in Phoenix. They slip into the back of the van again, and when he's fallen asleep, she pulls on her clothes, grabs that duffle that contains the supplies he brought for her, and makes her escape out the back door. He wakes as she's leaving, but it's morning by then, the K-Mart is open, and he can't just dash out of the van without any clothes on. By the time he's pulled on his pants, she's gone.

* * *

To be continued, I guess. :)


	2. Chapter 2

Title: **Fade** (Chapter 2)  
Author: agent otter  
Summary: "It's safer that way, to remain constantly on the move. But this isn't the first time that they've sacrificed safety for something else." Sydney/Vaughn  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: I don't own _Alias_ or anything having to do with it, but if I did I'd be seeing a lot more of Bradley Cooper. And I mean that in several literal ways.  
Author's note: I'm just making this up as I go along, and it's not beta'd or even spellchecked. (Yay for crappy Notepad.) But I hope you enjoy it anyway.

He stops in Victorville to clean out the van: vacuuming the carpets, wiping down the panels and surfaces and everything she might've touched. He takes the mattress out of the back, throws it in a dumpster behind a grocery store and then sets it on fire for good measure. When he's satisfied that the vehicle's clean, he abandons it on the side of the road and walks to the Motel 6.

The first thing he does is secure the room, checking it over thoroughly for hidden bugs or surveillance. He expects nothing, and finds nothing. The second thing he does is take a long, hot shower, scrubbing the scent of her from his skin, washing away her fingerprints, the taste of her kisses, every last trace of her. When he gets out and wraps himself in a towel, he shivers despite the humid air trapped in the bathroom, and he thinks, _She's safe now, she's safe, she's safe, no one can touch her._

_Not even me._

His skin feels immaculate and raw as he slips between the covers. The bed is cold, and he doesn't sleep well.

He makes the rest of the drive to Los Angeles in a rental car, and he's on his way before the sun rises, wrapped up in the pre-dawn darkness to avoid traffic, but he'd much rather avoid the thoughts that clamor around in his head in the early-morning quiet. It's still early when he arrives in LA, and he stops by his apartment to change out of his jeans and into a suit, then drives to the Joint Task Force building in his rental car.

His arrival does not go unnoticed. Even junior officers who he's quite certain he's never met give him speculative and wary glances as he walks by. He passes Weiss in the corridor, and his friend gives him a faint smile and a clap on the shoulder, and says: "Debrief in ten."

Vaughn makes his way to his own desk, but he doesn't expect to find refuge and quiet there; his desk is pressed face-to-face with Jack Bristow's, forming one large work space between them. The paperwork he'd left spread over the surface when he'd driven out of Los Angeles is gone now, neatly cleared away.

Jack meets his eyes as he collapses into his chair, and there's a long moment of silent communication between them. Vaughn wonders, sometimes, when and how that connection was forged, but he finds it difficult to concentrate on the past without a little more privacy, a little more time, and a lot more liquor. He lets the thought pass out of mind.

"She's alright?" Jack says, after a moment's hesitation.

"She's fine," Vaughn answers. "She left me in Phoenix."

He curses himself as soon as the words leave his mouth. He'd meant to say _I dropped her off in Phoenix_. But it's too late to take it back. Jack just blinks at him, nods as if the information hadn't been quite so telling as all that, and turns his attention back to the paperwork on his desk. He reads the same page three times.

"I didn't mean to say that," Vaughn says, dropping his own pen and giving up the pretense of work. "But she left me in Phoenix. She left." He massages the back of his neck with one hand, but mostly because it's an excuse to intricately study the unremarkable plastic surface of his desk. "I'm never going to get her back, am I, Jack?"

He doesn't get a chance to answer. Weiss stops by their desks to remind them again of the debriefing, and Vaughn can feel Kendall's eyes on the back of his neck from across the room. Bristow gives him a sad smile, and clasps a hand tightly on the younger man's shoulder as he stands, bracing his weight on the cane with his other hand. They walk slowly toward the conference room, with Vaughn matching Jack's hobbling pace, and when they're finally inside, Kendall closes the conference room door with an air of finality.

"Agent Vaughn, I trust you had an enjoyable vacation," Kendall says, as the agents take their seats. There's something in his voice that warns, _I know more than you want me to._

"Yes, sir," Vaughn replies, and he leaves it there.

Kendall's eyes narrow. "And how is Agent Bristow?"

_Don't panic, don't panic,_ Vaughn repeats to himself. To Kendall, he says, "He seems to be doing well, sir, but maybe you should ask him yourself." He looks at Jack, as if in expectation of a full report on the senior agent's physical condition, but his eyes beg for help.

"Knee feels just fine today," Jack says, and his voice is a warning rumble like distant thunder fast approaching. "Now can we carry on with this debrief? I've got a lot of work to do."

* * *

She takes three full days just to travel away from Phoenix, but she hits some stores first. New clothes, new hair, different makeup, and she's still amazed at how easy it is to create a stranger in the mirror. She buys a used car and starts driving, and at the end of a blur of roadside diners and double yellow lines, she finds herself in Denver. She only stays for two days, then she moves on. Cheyenne. Boise. El Paso. Cedar City. She sticks to the larger cities, where her comings and goings won't be noticed or remarked upon by the locals, but she still feels uneasy. She takes a week in Mexico, in Ciudad Obregon, but she's restless on her feet, and paranoia makes her leave town.

They find her just outside of Wichita.

She's been carelessly lately, and they catch her easily, but she's difficult to hold on to, and none of them survive her daring escape. After that she's more careful, but it does little good; the hounds have caught her scent and she can't seem to shake them.

She makes the call out of desperation, late on a Friday night, from a motel in Abilene, Texas. She nearly loses her nerve, but he picks up on the second ring.

"You don't know anything about me," she says, skipping over the greetings and pretenses.

There's a pause, and she can almost hear him shaking his head. "You're wrong. I know you better than you want anyone to know you. Isn't that why you left?"

"I've killed people."

"Join the club."

"I killed my best friend." A sob threatens to escape her mouth, but she catches it in her throat, smothers it with ruthless expertise.

"I killed my dog."

She'd been prepared to carry on with the self-recriminations, but he's stopped her cold. Her jaw is dangling open and she can do nothing but blink stupidly for a few moments, then she manages to choke out, "You killed Donovan?"

"Well, no. I just made that up. But you didn't kill your best friend, either, so I sort of figured we were heading into fiction territory and I should embellish."

She wants to scream at him, utilizing curse words in a wide range of languages, but she can't seem to do it. She finds herself smiling instead. "How is Donovan really?"

"He misses you." He's smiling, too; she can hear it in his voice. "He thinks that my skills in the belly-rubbing arts pale in comparison to yours. Though I don't think he minds never being locked out of the bedroom anymore."

Sydney's smile fades away, and she catches her lower lip between her teeth. It's a tell, but he isn't there to see it, so she doesn't bother to suppress it. "Not ever?"

He sighs, and that's a tell too. "No, now I just leave the door open during the wild orgies."

She laughs, almost in spite of herself, and and she pictures him on the other end of the line, sitting on his couch, shoes off, feet up, looking relaxed. There would be a tension in his body, detectable to her eyes if she were there, but she can hear it in his voice regardless, and it's mixed up with love and longing and frustration. But they're chatting like it's a regular Friday night and they're about to make plans for dinner and a movie and she'll be staying at his place tonight and locking the dog out of the bedroom because he likes to jump up on the bed to see what all the excitement's about...

"I shouldn't have called you, before," she says suddenly, because it's what she's been wanting to say all along. "When I asked you to come and get me. I put us both in danger -- but I always do, don't I? -- and it was a stupid thing to do. I'm sorry I left like that in Phoenix."

"Sydney--"

"It's not even that it would make it easier for them to track me, really, or that it messed up some perfect life I was having. I don't regret any of it for those reasons."

"But you do regret it?" His voice cracks as a sob almost escapes. It's understandable, she thinks, because he never could be a ruthless killer like her, even when all they're ruthlessly killing are the emotions that choke them.

"I regret that it hurt you," she clarifies. "Because I know that it did. I did. And it was selfish. This whole thing has been selfish."

There's a pause as he thinks over the implications of that statement, and she finds herself giving very intense scrutiny to the pattern of the worn bed-spread she's sitting on. It's something awful and floral, and its uniformity is interrupted every once in awhile by old stains. She doesn't want to know what they are.

"This whole thing," Vaughn finally says. "You mean the past year and change. You mean you're--" He can't seem to finish the sentence. Doesn't want to jinx it.

"This doesn't make things any better, does it? It just makes them worse." She has to suck in a breath before she can speak again. That sob is crawling up her throat again, looking for a way to escape. "I'd like to come home. Can you meet me in Phoenix?"


	3. Chapter 3

Title: **Fade** (Chapter 3/3)  
Author: agent otter  
Summary: "It's safer that way, to remain constantly on the move. But this isn't the first time that they've sacrificed safety for something else." Sydney/Vaughn  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: I don't own _Alias_ or anything having to do with it, but if I did I'd be seeing a lot more of Bradley Cooper. And I mean that in several literal ways.

  


He's come to think of them as comfort clothes: soft long-sleeved shirts that cover her hands all the way to the knuckles, loose-fitting jeans, flexible Keds. She always wears her hair down when she's dressed this way because it makes a good veil to hide behind. But she doesn't hide from him; not at the moment, anyway. Her face is downcast, but her left hand sweeps the hair up and tucks it behind her ear. She casts a nervous, sidelong glance at him from beneath that raised curtain, and smiles a very small smile.

He realizes that he made a mistake with her the last time; gave her too many chances to think, too much time to mull things over, too many opportunities to break and run. The drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles will take about seven hours -- he expects traffic once they hit Los Angeles County, because there's always traffic in LA -- but he stops only for bathroom breaks, and keeps a sharp eye on her. They drive straight through, no matter how much he wants to pull the car over and pull her into the backseat. He settles for occasionally grasping blindly for her hand and, when he finds it, giving it a gentle squeeze that says _thankyouthankyouthankyou for coming home_.

Vaughn tries to convince himself that he's not falling over himself with gratitude just because she's (finally, finally) sitting in the passenger seat of his car. He tries to remember that this wouldn't be such a victory if she hadn't fled in the first place. He tries to remember over a year's worth of lonely nights, worry, wondering. He tries to remember what she's put him through but all he can think is how wonderful she smells and how much he wants to touch her.

The drive passes surprisingly quickly; it's late by the time they arrive in Los Angeles, and the freeways are mostly clear. She'll have to be debriefed, reinstated, reprimanded, but the CIA will have to wait until morning to have their turn with her. He drives her to his building -- it used to be _their_ building, but he isn't sure he can call it that anymore -- and leads her up the back stairs, through the hallway, and into the apartment.

He wants to scream at her, to rage and maybe, if he's feeling particularly brave, break some things. But the look on her face as she stands in his living room -- _their_ living room -- is so lost and penitent and broken, that all he can do is wrap his arms around her and breathe in the scent of her hair. He strips her comfort away one piece at a time, leaves it crumpled on the floor, but he replaces it with his own: bare arms wrapped around her back, chest pressed to hers, nose buried in the curve of her neck.

When they're in bed, drifting away, he holds her tightly, and when he means to whisper "I'm glad you're back" or "I love you" or "don't you ever do that to me again," what actually comes out is, "Please don't disappear. Please. Please."

She's still there in the morning, and she holds him tightly when he cries.

THE END

Abrupt? Probably. But I didn't know where I was going and neither did you. HAH! So uh... yeah. I swear the next story will be better. ;) But maybe you should review me anyway...


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